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This latest Stephen Hawking book deserves special mention for an attempt to answer some of the most perplexing questions man has ever thought of in just a short book. Some of the questions posed at the beginning of the books include: How and why does the universe behave as it is? What is the nture of reality? Why do we exist? Did the universe need a creator? Though these are questions that we would normally categorize as controversial and highly subjective, the book takes no qualms in explaining the nature of these issues that resolve at a conclusion, all presented in a text average readers can easily digest.

In a nutshell, the authors claim that God or any other divine figure is not needed to create the universe; that if there were no universe, a universe would has been created itself from nothing; that our existence is all but a coincidence that we were situated a planet and universe that supports life, among other things. They back up these claim by arguments based on scientific knowledge, from quantum mechanics, relativity, recent advances in cosmology, etc. They also highlight a so-called M-theory, which is the closest thing to the Theory of Everything popularized by Einstein, and predict that because there are many other universes besides this universe we are in, some of them may also allow other life forms to exist.

While many may dismiss this book as just one of those science vs religion books that is just after the sales and bestseller status, I wounded up as one of the curious people who bought the book and wanted to learn what one of the greatest scientist and popular science writer of our era had to say in his latest work. I remember trying to read his classic “A Brief History of Time” when I was still young but I often turned the book down because I couldn’t keep up with it then. This latest one is quite different in that it is much simpler, complemented with figures and comic strips. Whether one would believe their bold claims and their consequences or not, I think this is good read especially to those popular science buffs who are interested in scientific historical anecdotes or hearing out a different perspective of the origin and nature of the universe.